Smoke in the distance
The widow’s kerchief is covered with drops of waxy cemetery wax. This rain cannot be stopped. The preserved face of the dead man is melting slowly and greedy pigeons are trying to steal pieces of skin for themselves. The lips of children are sewn up with the words of the priest. The black range of clothes creaks like music in tangled hair. Kittens are playing in the corner with shoe laces and do not understand anything. No one returns from war alive. So he’s dead. His comrades are standing nearby. There is sadness on their faces, but they are also now dead. No one returns from war alive. Even disabled children and pigeons. This smoke in the distance means nothing.
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Mykyta Ryzhykh
Review by Zeke Sanchez
In the past I myself have been criticized for writing something like “waxy cemetery wax” where I either repeat a word or a version of it, as M. Ryzhykh does here. But what is a better way to define the wax here? One could say rocky or uneven waxed surface, but it wouldn’t fit the bill. So in Mykyta Ryzhykh’s “Smoke in the distance” I’ll take it as written. The children’s mouths are shut tight while they listen to the priest. Kittens play in the corner, pigeons try to take pieces of skin for nourishment. The widow is there for her dead, waxy husband. Oddly the comrades nearby are dead, too, perhaps as ghosts. The oddest part of this poem, though, is that the pigeons are also dead. Perhaps it means that as the disabled children are dead emotionally, so are the traumatized pigeons, having long endured the shelling of a city.
Excellent poem. One wonders if the sentence: “Even disabled children and pigeons” shouldn’t be “Not even children or pigeons”?
This is a very powerful, compact poem. The language presses meaning together.
Review by Jared Pearce
The desolation here is absolute, shattered to, well, nothing, and it’s that sense of utter annihilation fostered by the images and repetition and slight variations on the repetitions that make it hit so hard.
Review by Nancy Christopherson
This well-crafted poem says everything anyone needs to know about war’s terrible cost. It sweeps the reader up close and personal to the private impact of pain and then kindly retreats to a safe distance out of compassion. In eight brilliant and taut lines, with perfect use of simile and metaphor, juxtaposed between lines composed of plain clear language, the poet brings the reader to the truth of it. As he writes, No one returns from war alive. Not even the most innocent of all (especially not those). The purest, most sadly significant, saturated truth. We need to listen carefully to this reading, we must halt the continuum of ongoing wars, otherwise that smoke in the distance means nothing. We cannot continue to allow any smoke we see to mean nothing. It means everything. With deepest respect and regards to poet Mykyta Ryzhykh for showing us. Thank you.